Blood On Borrowed Wings: A Dark Fantasy Thriller

by Darren Stapleton

  Squinting to filter the lights, and picking up white squiggling ghosts of retinal burn across my vision for my trouble, I got my measure of the exact dimensions of the cage. Knew its corners and limitations. Knew the battlefield. That would help with the fight.

  I closed my eyes and controlled my breathing, reined it in, set the restless horses from canter to trot, made myself still. I imagined the dimensions of the cage, our positions within it, how it would accommodate wingspan and forward and lateral movement. The locked gate. The illumination. The game.

  ‘I WILL BE YOUR REFEREE FOR THIS EVENING,’ Jackdaw continued, ‘NO BITCH-SLAPPING, HAIR PULLING OR HEAVY PETTING.’

  I dropped my club and bow through a hole in the mesh to the floor outside of the cage, they clattered on the concrete.

  Jackdaw laughed and cracked his neck from side to side.

  ‘AND ONE MORE THING, DINOSAUR …’ he paused again.

  Theatrics.

  ‘ONLY ONE OF US IS GOING TO BE WALKING OUT OF THIS CAGE.’

  A klaxon sounded as he depressed a button on the microphone, dropped it through a gap in the mesh and punched his bare, empty fists together.

  I raised my hands and started walking forwards.

  It was on.

  We met in the centre of the ring. The first transaction was clear, a tester, he jabbed at me with a fast right, it glanced my jaw. I returned a hefty body shot through his dropped guard and into his wide open stance, a gush of air ripped out as I connected. We had both proved we knew how to take a punch.

  The hits had not really affected either of us.

  They were not meant to.

  They were tasters, allowing us to assess reactions, reach, counters and tells; giveaway signs like the flash of an eyeball or the twitch of a muscle that told you they were going to hit, from left or right, hand or foot.

  His slow footwork had left him wide open to my body shot, his right handed stance meant quick strikes would come from that side of his body. His size was also a problem. I would use his lack of speed to my advantage. Most significantly, during our last exchange he had telegraphed his opening gambit with a tensing of his mouth. It came milliseconds before the blow, but it gave me the information I needed. His tell. All of this examination happened in an instant, and I knew he was doing similar computations. Sizing me up.

  He was still smiling black, all over his mouth guard; it looked comical and sickly.

  We both circled counter-clockwise.

  I could feel the heat from the lights.

  Jackdaw was confident and muscle-bound, breathing heavily through his nose, anger and amusement vied for position on his scarred, angular face.

  I slowed my breathing down.

  Canter to trot.

  He jabbed again, I rocked left and stepped in to drive a rib-breaking fist hard up into his solar plexus. Only he was not there. He had stepped left and drove a sidekick into my stomach. I felt my glowing fat and muscle fold around the blade of his foot and the bellows of my lungs compressed, expelling air and spit as I doubled over. Winded, I flinched, expecting another blow but it did not come. Jackdaw was retreating to his corner. He turned and showed me his sickly dark grin again.

  ‘I am enjoying this, Mr Has-been, are you?’ His words sounded crumpled with the distortion of speaking around his mouth guard, but I understood perfectly. He was playing. He knew the fighting tricks and was using my knowledge of them against me. He was fighting in a structured, calculated manner, measuring tactics and responses. It was the way he knew, the way to please the audience, the way to draw out then win the bout and conclude with the fans’ approval.

  His way.

  He stood and started to run, then with two downbeats started to fly. He banked in one of the corners, turning at the last possible moment. His black feathers caught the mesh with a glancing, metallic twang as he turned to angle in towards me using every inch to gain momentum.

  I squatted lower on my haunches, tucked my wings in and readied to pounce.

  He came out of his bank bringing both feet out and towards me. The classic landing stance, though he was aiming to use my face as a runway. I rolled towards him rather than away from him, but he anticipated my move again, twisted sideways and used his forward momentum to land a meaty fist high on my forehead as he went by.

  My neck snapped back and the lights of the Arena glowed brighter. I felt my consciousness start to slip. Breath jittered out of me in shallow coughs and tears burned in my eyes. I knocked my seat over. The world was swimming. I was trying to pull myself up using the mesh for handholds, clambered to my knees.

  A rush of noise filled my ears, like crowds cheering. No. It was more the sound of a river rushing; the surge of the tidal pulse in my ears, heard my heart.

  It was the noise of defeat and I felt fear.

  It fluttered on the edge of my perception like a butterfly. I wanted to rationalise, ask questions and search for answers and reasons and … and … excuses. I wanted to shout my disgust that it had come to this. That it always came to this.

  I wanted to curl up and meet my end.

  I had been here before.

  That was the problem.

  I was thinking too much, treating this like a game of chess, gauging, calculating, giving rote responses to textbook blows. He knew which ways I would feint and bow, the diagrammatic pitches and yaws of my retaliation or defence, my training, my military encoding. He was fighting fluidly, organically, his fight was not linear or stimulus-response driven. It was changing, growing, evolving. He was fighting his way. He was picking his strikes and pulling my strings and fighting professionally, his way.

  And he was winning.

  A dark anger started to build in me.

  A fury at everything.

  Pan.

  Doc.

  My brother.

  Everything.

  A swirling vortex, a black hole spun at my core and every bit of logic, reason and light was being sucked into it; burning up on re-entry, disappearing, dragged down into the abyss and gravity.

  My guilt, my apathy.

  My selfish heart.

  Obliterated.

  All that remained was consciousness.

  And rage.

  ‘You’re a fucking dinosaur, do you know that?’

  Jackdaw was high on the mesh, clinging with his fingers and feet. He had not even hit the floor after hitting me. He looked like a hanging bat. His wings flexed in and out sinuously as he spoke.

  Every second he spoke helped me get my breath back.

  I heard something else about antiques and staving my face in and my brother.

  It was all background noise, radio static to pulse filled ears.

  He was goading me, pressing different combinations of all the buttons until I let him in.

  He thought he was looking at a broken man.

  I went as if to hit him and then sank to my knees again, shaking my head as if still dazed.

  Let my wings drape across the floor.

  My head bowed.

  Jackdaw hadn’t even bothered moving.

  ‘Do you know something, for a Slayer …’

  I threw the stool at him, surprised him. The use of objects, including seats, was not permitted in Angelbrawling contests and I knew he would not be prepared. He ducked his head and moved off centre, loosened his grip on the bars. I reached up and took hold of his wings, pulled down on them with my full strength and body weight. He shouted, came down on top of me, like a black veil and I pummelled nondescript fists and feet into every soft thing I came up against. He clawed out at me, used his manicured nails to rake three neat furrows down my right cheek. I hardly noticed the pain and sank my teeth into his left wing.

  He noticed.

  A high pitched yelp came out of him and echoed around the vast hall, he squealed as he rolled away.

  Some of the dark feathers came loose and blood sprayed over both of us as he pulled back.

  Now we both looked like we had been in a fight.


  We stood.

  I spat feathers like a post-catch cat.

  Jackdaw did not respond, his eyes fixed squarely on me.

  My chest was heaving up and down and I realised the wings at my back did more than just allow me the option of flight, they completed me, made me feel whole. As my rising and falling chest fought to control the rage, burn the oxygen, quell the effort, I felt as I used to in battle. At one with my surroundings, familiar with my opponent; I felt in control.

  I continued, ‘We do not have to fight, I do not want to kill you, but if you come again I will put you down.’

  Jackdaw did not respond, he just stared, eyes wide, chest heaving, a fine spatter of blood across his face.

  His coiffured hair was a mess.

  I wondered what I looked like.

  I could feel the sting of the new furrows on my right cheek. I think something was bleeding at the base of my wing too. A slow snake of blood trickled down, leaving a warm, sticky trail down the valley and ridges of my lower back.

  ‘I will put you down,’ I whispered.

  He came at me then, a wild Mudhound, flailing and savage. His teeth were bared, his fingers extended, a scream belched out of him and spittle flew from his lips. He resembled a damaged grotesque, a sentinel frozen in the arc-sodium glare of the lights, a church gargoyle in the eye of the midday sun. His game had gone. His tactics and control and mouth guard were all somewhere else. All that was left was the stomping id and primordial desperation, the tantrum-spurned kicking and screaming of a child who was too used to getting his way and the snarling ferocity of an animal without reason, warped with hubris and ruination.

  A rabid dog.

  I put him down.

  Always go to sleep on an argument – there is nothing more likely to piss the opposition off.

  Improverbs

  Hawksley & Eames

  CHAPTER 90

  Beaugent brought the Orca down on one of his lesser-used Edgeland plinths in silence. Loopes was pretending to be busy in the kitchen and Bronagh, though waiting nearby to moor the Zeppelin, said nothing on landing. After successfully mooring their ship he went to his quarters. Beaugent gave him a couple of minutes then followed him in. He found Bronagh laying on his bunk, reading.

  ‘Weather’s bad. We ought to settle her for the night, somewhere in the lea of the wind. Maybe take a break for a few days whilst this storm blows itself out.’

  Bronagh turned a page and carried on reading.

  ‘We should have some fun. We have been ferrying backwards and forwards and on the move for twenty straight weeks now, some tough jobs, reckon we are due a break.’

  Bronagh said nothing.

  ‘It’s going to be like that is it?’ Beaugent said.

  'After everything you said Cap. All the mess. You still pick this scum up?'

  ‘It’s what we do.’

  ‘No. It’s what you do. Me and Loopes are just stuck along for the ride.’

  ‘What, so now I am supposed to only carry cargo you approve of? You know how this works, Bronagh: we ship the things no one else wants to touch, we do not ask questions and we most certainly cannot afford the luxury of turning down good business, any business, that brings credits our way or keeps us in the air.’

  ‘We used to enjoy it though, Cap, didn’t we?’

  ‘You didn’t used to behave like a sulking teenager, that’s why.’

  Bronagh propped himself up on an elbow. ‘But don’t you ever question why you are doing it? What is the point in working a job, or living a life, doing something that makes your world less liveable? Yourself less likeable.’

  ‘I don’t care what others think. You know that.’

  ‘I do know that, and that is what makes you a good captain. But sometimes, boss, you just got to listen to the people closest to you, or you will forget who you are and why you are doing things in the first place.’

  ‘You don’t like it, you can get off right now.’

  Bronagh forced a thin smile. ‘And that’s your answer, is it? Rather than listen? Just show us the door and cart those Blackwing scum around on your own? Because me and Loopes will go, Beaugent, I promise you that.’

  ‘I do not like threats.’

  Bronagh stood. He looked tired, but calm. ‘Threats come from the mouths of those Blackwings we are waiting for. Threats come shortly after we start carting Governors’ entourages about and loaning out harpoon guns. That is if we are not disappeared entirely for our involvement.’

  ‘Choice is a luxury …’

  ‘Yeah, that we can’t afford. I know, I know.’

  ‘Do you? Do you really?’

  ‘Look Beaugent, fuck the money. Can we afford to feel like this about ourselves? About what we do?’

  Beaugent grunted and walked away. He stopped in the doorway and spoke over his shoulder, without looking back.

  ‘The Blackwings will be arriving soon, I want them transported and off this ship as soon as possible, so be ready to loosen the tethers.’

  Bronagh said nothing.

  ‘Then choose as you may, we’ll drop them where they want and you can get off soon after. Both of you, and I’ll get a less whiny, more able crew. Long overdue anyway.’ He slammed the door to Bronagh’s quarters and stormed off to wait outside.

  Bronagh went to tell Loopes to pack his things.

  Crashing, turning, falling; where something great once flew.

  Distant, spiralling, troubled; the thermals I once knew.

  Low and full of sorrow, I careen into the wall.

  Lost height in no tomorrow,

  Launched myself into the fall.

  Psalms of the Sky

  K. Denman

  CHAPTER 91

  I knew I had to come back here, what had Pan called it, Hotel Hostility? Since Doc had explained how easy it was for me, for us, to escape. I looked at the low-level building and holding cells Pan and I had escaped from and knew there would be no evidence left inside before I even walked through the open door. The absence of flies or smell of rotting flesh meant that someone had cleaned up and good.

  Every room I entered was empty. No stains on the floor. No marks or equipment left. No teeth or shattered glass from fractured goggles. Just a poured-stone, featureless square building that looked like a tomb where all the bodies had resurrected themselves and shambled off to pastures newer, or greener.

  I had hoped to find something. Anything. Thought maybe just by being in the vicinity I would see something or jar a memory of something helpful free, but there was nothing.

  I went back outside and looked over at the black fields. I could remember talking to Pan about them at the confluence of juxtaposed geological formations. Nimbus City looming off to the East, the stench of sulphur caught on the stormy winds blowing from the West. I thought of heading deeper amongst the twisted mangroves and black pools of the swamps to see if something had been hidden behind their natural screen.

  It was then I realised what was wrong with my surroundings, it was strange for the absence of change rather than because of it.

  When I was last here, grass and long reeds away to the east had been trampled flat by traffic. I had assumed that it had been from the idiots that had taken me down at the Arena, maybe even thought that the crude building had been erected specifically for them, or me. Now, the grass was still flattened, the track still pressed and worn. In spite of all the rain and perfect weather for vegetation to thrive, the surroundings looked exactly the same. In the weeks since I had been surely things would have grown, tracks recovered, nature would have found a way to start to claim back some of its territory. Nature always finds a way.

  Traffic had continued to come here, possibly in even greater numbers, and recently. I followed the direction of the vehicle tracks in the dirt. In places where a route was not obvious, I could pick up the trail where the grasses were snapped or bowed in unison showing me the way.

  The bleeding had stopped at the base of my wing but something did not feel right as I open
ed and closed it. My fight with Jackdaw had taken it out of me, in many ways, but none more than the burning sensation I felt at my wing bases. I felt like I was being cauterised from the inside, a band of muscle and sinew so tight across my back that it was as if elasticised bandages had been applied with the sole purpose of constricting full movement and bending me double. It hurt when I breathed. The three nail gouges across my cheek had stopped bleeding and their welts stood prominent, the upper most one visible and distracting at the bottom of my field of vision.

  The wind picked up and I was just contemplating taking a break when I saw it, shimmering behind the bending grasses of a building storm; a large, curved dome hangar.

  Once it had shone, its dimpled curves and corrugated sides catching and rebounding light from the low desert sun, but its better days were gone. The high, arced structure had all the architectural appeal of a bunker and though it had withstood centuries of weather and mankind’s belligerence and abuse, its stoicism was due more to stubbornness than any dutiful or admirable design or intent. In the restrictive light of the storm it looked like a belligerent mass ready to pounce or strike.

  As I got closer I could see that the semi-circular end to the hangar was covered in a thick layer of dust and soot, where engines from years ago had belched their signatures before taxiing out onto the once smooth poured surface to escape to the skies beyond. I saw a white van through a tattered hole in one of the corners, giving the hangar the appearance akin to a chewed thumbnail, painfully bitten too often and low. The speckled concrete struts that supported the structure had pocks and holes that added to the sense of neglect and dilapidation. Someone had sprayed an ode to their sweetheart, in black, along the concrete base; there was a name I could not discern from this distance, followed with the refrain: if destroyed still true. That could apply to the building, despite its state and standing, even if less of it remained in a somehow worse condition, it would still stand as a testament to what was here before. Science. Effort. Invention. Discovery. And war.